Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1887-06-04
The western Species Of American.


Shall raise once more our native land,
The martyred isle of ages.
The Western Species Of American.
The American man, the
Drawer imagines, only develops
himself and spreads himself and
grows "for all he is worth" in the
Great West. He is more free and
timber there, and unfolds those gen.
erous peculiarities and largenesses of
humanity which never blossomed
before. The "environment" has
much to do with it. The great
spaces over which he roams contri-
butte to the enlargement of his men
tai horizon. There have been races
before who roamed the illimitable
desert, but they Travelled on foot or
on camel-back, and were limited in
their range. There was nothing con-
tinental about them, as there is about
our railway desert travellers, who
swing along through thousands of
miles of sand and sage-bush with a
growing contempt for time and
space. But expansive and great as
these people have become under the
new conditions, the Drawer has
fancy that the development of the
race has only just begun, and that the
future will show us in perfection
kind of man new to the world. Out
somewhere on the Santa Fe route,
where the desert of one day was
like the desert of the day before, and
the Pullman car rolls and swings
over the wide waste beneath the
blue sky day after day, under its
black flag of smoke, in the early gray
of morning, when the men were
waiting their turns at the ablution
bowls, slip of boy, perhaps aged
seven, stood balancing himself on his
little legs, clad in knickerbockers,
biding his time, with all the non
chalance of an old campaigner.
"How did you sleep, cap?" asked a
"Well, thank you," was the digni-
fed response; "as / always do on a
sleeping-car." Always does? Great
horrors! Hardly out of his swad-
dling-clothes, and yet he always
sleeps well in a sleeper! Was he
born on the wheels? was he cradled
in a Pullman He has always been
in motion, probably; he was started
at thirty miles an hour, no doubt,
this marvellous boy of our new era.
He was not born in house at rest,
but the locomotive snatched him
along with a shrek and a roar
before his eyes were fairly open, and
he was rocked in section" and
his first sensation of life was that OF
moving rapidly over vast aridspaces,
through cattle ranges, and along
canons. The effort of quick and easy
locomotion on character may have
been noted before, but it seems that
here is the production of a new sort
of man, the direct product of our rail-
way era. 1t is not simply that this
boy is mature, but he must be q
different and a ncbler sort of boy
than one born, say, at home or on a
canal boat; for whether he was born
on the rail or not, he belongs to the
b railway system of civilization. Be
fore he gets into trousers he is old In
: experience, and he has discounted
many OF the novelties that usually
break gradually on the pilprim in
this world. He belongs to the new
expansive race that must live il
motion whose proper home is the
Pullman (Which will probably bt
improved in time into dustless
sweet-smelling, well-aired bedroom)
and whose domestic life will be or
the wing, so to speak. The Inter
State Commerce Bill will pass hin
along without friction from end t.
end of the Union, and perhaps a uni
form divorce law will enable him Il
change his marital relations at any
place where he happens to dine
This promising lad is only faint in
timation. of what we are all cominl
to when we fully acquire the freedom
of the continent, and come into tina
expansiveness of feeling and of Ian
guage which characterizes the Grea
West. 1t is burst of joyous exuber
auce that comes from the sense of al
illimitable horizon. 1t shows itsel
in the tender words of local news
paper at Bowie, Arizona, on tn,
death of beloved citizen "'Deatl
loves a shining mark, and she hit {
dandy when she turned loose OF
jim" And also in the closing word
OF New Mexico obituary, which tn
Kansas Magazine quotes: she
tired spirit was released from thl
Ipainracking body and scared aloft I,
eternal glory at 4.30, Denver time.
We die, as it were, in motion, as W,
sleep, and there is nowhere an,
boundary to our expansion. Per
l haps we shall never again know an,
rest as we now understand tin